The Unheard
by The Legend of Derpy
Summary: Vinyl looses something precious.
1. The Hospital

The visitor walks into the hospital, a building finely laced with the non-familiar, somewhat austere aroma of stern nurses and delirious old colts, swinging a sagging bag of flowers with gift shop origin. Tulips, the preferred choice of the gift's beneficiary. After a few elevator rides and reaching the lined door marked with a faux gold plaque (it reads 27-A), she pushes it open with a solitary hoof and tries to contain a verbal grievance. It wouldn't be troublesome if she could not control such a noise in the first place, nurses in the hospital are used to such a sound and the mare in the room wouldn't have been able to hear her anyway. But she has to keep a straight face. Getting a firm grip on the heaving chest, she announces something tentatively to access the fragile attention of the one in the bed, the mare in question embellished by red wires connecting her body to virtual support, before the visitor shoves her hoof up her mouth in light of her unintentional insult. The bedridden horse does not take notice. She is too busy counting the diverse variety of plaster cracks on the dulling wall dotting the horizon of her legs to take notice. It is doubtfully that she is even aware of her friend's presence. It is not the visitor's fault for making such a mistake, her hoof still firmly lodged in mouth, the new condition of her friend will just take an extensive span of time to become fully acquainted with. This is provided she doesn't leave the mare who appears to be dumbly staring ahead at the wall just at the foot of her bed. She won't, she promises to herself. For the meantime, any verbal communication is off limits and rubs salt in the wounds of her hospitalized friend. And she makes the first step of many.

Only now does the mare recognize the presence of a visitor, not by the sound of her hooves but by the brash shadow that dares infiltrate the complex system of lines running through Steve. Steve is what she named the wall, not because she was lonely in her confinements but because it simply looked like a Steve. She half expects a parade of paparazzi to waltz into the room after her friend, for she can only imagine that about half of the Gabby Gums network is creating a semi circle around the ER - after all, it isn't just everyday the eardrums of a famous dubstep trailblazer decide to rupture mid concert - but fortunately the hospital has denied the fervent troupes any and all access to her peace. It isn't as if she'd be able to answer their questions, in any case. The shadow takes a chair next to her bed and slowly takes the form of a familiar face. Octavia now smiles down on her, the drugs slowing down the reaction time of the disabled mare. It's the first time that splintered chair has been used in about a week, probably on account of the splinters themselves, but the instrumentalist doesn't seem to mind. The invalid mare has been solitary in the hospital for a while, albeit the influx of nurses bearing food and the doctors bearing more ill news.

She takes to the food better.

Octavia starts to form a string of words, but soon realizes how useless they will be and discards them in favor of more positive facial expression, furthering the awkward silence that her friend has so soon grown accustomed to. Her eyes fall on a clipboard hanging for dear life from a chipped metal rung at the bed's edges. "Patient No. 3891", it reads. "Vinyl Scratch". Listed below are the logistics of her reason for hospital admittance (the medical terminology is odd, but from what she can understand, this hearing loss prominent in her friend is due to some sort of infection), numerous treatments, diagnoses, differing restatements of "improbable chance of regaining hearing", etcetera. A cold wind pushes through her skin, and at first she thinks it's a side affect of observing the aforementioned words in black and white, no misinterpretations from a shaky voice belonging to a hospital secretary over the telephone, one AM, shortly after the accident. But Octavia is looking too much into it, and theorizes correctly that perhaps the wind is created not by symbolic angst but by the overzealous news anchor with fake blonde mane extensions who used an unguarded back entrance to force the creation of an interview in the name of the freedom of the press, her cronies who all boast twenty inch high cameras rolling live to national television. There's a microphone tapping Octavia's face impatiently that is guarded by a field of rattled questions, ones she can't interpret and doesn't have to thanks to hospital security, who drags the crew away shortly after. The tabloids will surely slather scandal all over this incident, "Octavia Melody Hires Secret Police to Dispose of Innocent News Cast".

Vinyl, for the first time in weeks, smiles and reaches for the bag brought in by Octavia, pulling a red wire along with her. The machine gripes under the sudden movement. She pulls out a wilted flower and pops it into her mouth. Tulip, her favorite. Her stomach is being punctured by millions of invisible nails and smiling is the last thing on her mind, but she doesn't want to discourage her only guest in this past week. Vinyl had enough friends to fill an oversized mosh pit (which she had learned during her twenty third birthday the year prior after one phone call to enforcement from angry neighbors and twenty minutes of scrambling over bodies away from rampant police dogs later) but they were either all off on tour overseas in Prance or had schedules too active to manage a visit to a hospital in the beaten countryside. Her parents weren't coming around, as far as she knew. Her Dad was off in Las Pegasus spending his child support on hookers, and that was the last she heard of him four years ago. As for her mother, Vinyl knew from experience that hospitals usually frowned upon letting pot dealers into their facilities. Octavia is the only one she has.

So begins her silent world.

* * *

AN) I have no idea where I'm going with this story or how long it will be. It was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but I didn't know how to end it "correctly", so there you have it.

Sorry if it's a little confusing.


	2. The Room

When Vinyl opens her eyes the following morn, she is surprised to find her body not cradled by the hospital's cheap blankets by a cloak of purple velvet, a thick material much more refined than what she is used to. What feels like drunken stupor overtakes her mind in a lazy tide of warmth, and she begins to thrash slightly, scattered blankets around her hooves and springs crying uncle underneath her figure. A further divulge into her surroundings reveal an unfamiliar landscape, heavy curtains eclipsing the morning sunlight, a small room with purple wallpaper, the feel of a grandmother's house. Thick coats of glossy varnish hugging a nearby varnished crate create a snowy luster, courtesy of a minute streak of sunlight that finds a weakness in the window coverings. From this limited light, she gropes for her trademark glasses, eyes yawning into the back of her skull. She doesn't find them, but she does locate a photo frame on the nightstand juxtaposed perfectly angular with her bed. Two faces smile back at her, and the picture comes into focus rather casually, revealing to be the profiles of herself and Octavia. She inclines her back into the bed, energy gone, a balled up portion of the blanket digging into her spine and forcing it into an arc. It must be Octavia's guest bedroom, or maybe it is Octavia's bedroom. She's calculating the number of faint cracks on the ceiling, as they remind her of Steve, when shock registers in her veins. Is Octavia perhaps sleeping on a couch below, and has Vinyl kicked her out of her own home? Before she can launch a full investigation, a shadow sneaks under her blankets, and she is met with the face of her friend, leaning over the bed with a tray of baked goods. Breakfast. At least Vinyl didn't lose her sense of smell.

The head of a curious rose pokes through the top of the tray's plastic barrier and falls onto Vinyl's lap, pulling along with it a pen. In fact, upon further investigation, it appears that the rose is in fact a pen, a tip saturated with ink sticking from its bottommost stem, and Vinyl taps it against her lap curiously. A little ink splatters in puddles across the blankets, and she hurries to rub it out before Octavia takes notice. A pad is pushed toward her by gravity's doing, and the tray now rests on her lap. Octavia's smile breaks the dark spell enchanting the room, or perhaps it is the light that is created when the classical musician spreads the curtains. Vinyl brings her attention back to the pad.

Scrawled in messy handwriting is a previously existing message. "How are you today?" Judging by the nearly incomprehensible script, it most logically appears to have been written by the hoof of Octavia. She lifts the pen a few inches off the tray, and promptly drops it, the loose ink creating abstract art on the surface of the white tray. It's been about a week since she's used magic, and the few lasting effects of the hospital drugs are still affecting her movement. Vinyl tries again, this time successful, and manages a short response. Her calligraphy is graceful, Octavia notices from the corner of her eye; every letter has its own movement and body, jumping off the page like a crouched tiger. She trots away from the window with the intention of retrieving the pad, but Vinyl has already forced the object to careen stiffly to Octavia's awaiting hooves, a blue tinge surrounding the pad. She scans the elegant writing.

"That's kinda ironic, don't you think? Fine as I could be, though, thanks. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but why am I here?"

The non-use of magic on Octavia's part makes her response take longer, about two minutes, and the fact that where Vinyl's responses are brute, Octavia's are exquisite. But Vinyl is uncharacteristically patient on this morning, and has lost the voice to complain anyway. A bird warbles outside. The two's first conversation since the date of the accident is born.

"They must have given you some powerful drugs, Vinyl. You really mean to say that you cannot remember arriving here? Odd. Medicine is quite fascinating. Well, in answer to your question, there is no way you can live alone any more, nor would I possibly allow that, that is for certain. So until we have a permanent solution to your living situation, you are staying here."

"Look, I can take care of myself. Don't trouble yourself. I'll just lay low for a bit, okay? Let things simmer down in the Gabby Gums territory."

"Vinyl, half of Equestria already knows of your accident. It has been on news non-stop for the past week. Half of Equestria also knows where you live, thanks to your rather infamous parties. Do you not think that thieves are going to be targeting your place left and right? It's not safe."

She doesn't have anything to say to that, and decides to cut the conversation short by forcing closed the leather covering of the book. Avoiding her friends' eyes, she pulls herself out of bed, pad under arm. The tray sways slightly, placed to the side and its food long eaten. Plates clang as if symbols, and chip. The bed objects to the movement, shifting uncomfortably under the applied weight. Blankets struggle to bring back the white mare to the bed's surface, pulling her spine slightly, but she pulls them off like linen bandages and manages to land on all four feet. The floor, she now notices, is carpeted with frayed throw rugs of varying sizes. She decides it's as good a time as any, now, to test it out.

"Well?" she says to Octavia. "You gonna show me around, or what?"

Her voice shakes slightly, but she has no way of knowing that.


End file.
